


Sifting Through My Memories

by katonahottinroof



Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Don't copy to another site, Kidnapping, M/M, POV Thomas Nightingale, Post-World War II, no beta we die like men, no spoilers for Lies Sleeping, spoilers for all books through The Hanging Tree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 13:52:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17044931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katonahottinroof/pseuds/katonahottinroof
Summary: Thomas Nightingale - lost and chained up. Peter Grant - decidedly neither of these things. Looks like it's time for someone else to take a turn at doing the rescuing for a change.





	Sifting Through My Memories

**Author's Note:**

  * For [little Alex (litalex)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/litalex/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! I hope you enjoy this, and have a lovely holiday season, whatever you may celebrate.
> 
> I meant to write you a long, plotty, involved casefic with ghosts, stolen treasure, and a Where's Where of the best London museums... but Research™ got in the way. (So much research!) So that's about half-done - and it's yours as soon as it's finished (about mid-January!)
> 
> In the meantime, have some slow realisation fic and boys being sweet.

He's sixteen and sneaking out of school with Mellenby and Price Major, the three of them just this side of tipsy on contraband liquor. Mellenby's hand is warm in his as they help each other through. Thomas sucks in a breath of cold winter air and David's fingers tighten briefly around his as their eyes meet before the moment's lost when Price Major stumbles and nearly brings the prefects down on them - or, worse, old Smitty whose sole remaining joys in life seem to be teaching maths and crushing the dreams of the upper years on a Friday evening.

He's forty-three and watching his friends die in the snow around him as they run for their lives and duck and cover, using the snow drifts and trees to shield themselves from sight. It's been more than a week now since any of them had a proper night's rest – longer still since they were inside for it. Captain Nightingale squeezes his eyes tight shut for just a second, just to pretend for one moment that he's out of this hellhole, and then the low call goes up from the scout ahead and they're running again, from the Nazis and wizards and god knows what the German scientists have cooked up – werewolves, he'd heard the rumours. Some Christmas, Captain Nightingale thinks to himself, and readies the forma in his mind just in case, his fingers clenched tight around his battle staff and almost numb with the cold.

He's thirty and falling into bed with David, the both of them stripped down to just their drawers in deference to the hazy Indian heat. The muslin hangings around the beds are drawn back to air the place through, and Thomas thinks David's never looked so beautiful. He lifts a hand to trace his fingertips over David's mouth, open on a laugh, and feels himself fall hopelessly in love just a little more. They're young, and in love, and far from home – Thomas following up on a report of a local practitioner for the British Consul and David as eager as ever for new experiences, new knowledge, to fall into Thomas’ bed one minute and to spend an hour hunched over a microscope the next.

They're young, and in love, and far from home and they're _happy_. Thomas thinks that he's never been as incandescently happy as he is right in this moment.

He's forty-six and being released from the hospital. They'd kept the truth about David from him as long as possible, but he'd been allowed a weekend furlough from the hospital to visit David's mother and take her the drawings David had done over the years, the mix of cheaply cut and set stacks of paper between cardboard and the more expensively bound books from H J Ryman, all filled with the flowers, insects and animals they'd seen India and Australia and Brazil.

(He'd kept David's pocket watch, though, and David's mother hadn't asked about it. The casing had been scratched up a little, normal wear and tear, but the chain held firm, and the pressure of it in his waistcoat pocket pressed against him with every step.)

Thomas had kept it together during the interminable visit for her sake alone – _stiff upper lip, old chap_ , David’s voice in the back of his mind sound out – and back again on the train, changing at St Pancras and further across London to Waterloo and from there back out to Haslemere, walking down from the station as the shadows lengthened under the trees. Back to the hospital and through the main entrance, across the foyer and up the sweeping staircase. It's not until he's locked the door behind himself that Thomas realises that he's shaking, a scream caught behind his teeth.

He's eighty, and looks sixty again, the ache in his bones easing somewhat as he ages year by year. He doesn't know why it's happening and wonders what will happen in five, ten, in twenty years time when he reaches one hundred and if he’ll start a new century as the world around him does as well. Thomas catches Molly looking at him, sometimes, and wonders what she sees when she does.

He doesn't look in mirrors anymore.

He's sixty-five and looks it, feels the cold of the winter deep down inside of him when he ventures out of the Folly. He doesn't go out much, now – the world's changing too fast around him and Thomas feels sort of unstuck from the reality of life. (In decades to come, they might refer to this as PTSD, as the symptoms of residual trauma. He supposes he's been through enough that it might possibly apply, but never verifies this with anyone outside of one single evening when he's a little over the edge of tipsy on the good bottle of whiskey – the Folly’s libraries always have decanters of the stuff on hand, even decades after the last of the others have gone, one way or another – and Abdul, dear, patient, kind Abdul, is keeping him company and nursing a glass of sparkling water Molly has so thoughtfully provided.)

(Abdul has his suspicions as to what brought that on – he'd picked up the phone at 1 a.m. to a particular type of silence, the sort only Molly could make, and had arrived at the Folly to find Thomas already a little loose.)

(Thomas doesn't say anything, but it's the sixtieth anniversary of David's suicide.)

He's sixty-five and feels more comfortable in the cavernous surroundings of the Folly with its musty books and Molly's silent, gliding presence and room after room of covered furniture than he does outside with his nominal colleagues in the Metropolitan Police Force.

He's a hundred and eleven, and there's something in the air in London, something that he can't quite catch. Molly's been tense over the past couple of weeks and none of the usual Christmas decorations up in windows and on the outside of the neighbouring houses around the square can divert her attention. Thomas takes a stroll late one evening, meanders down from Russell Square through the lanes to Covent Garden. His leather gloves are snug on his hands and it's not so cold, even in January, that he feels the need for a heavier overcoat.

He keeps his silver-topped staff in a loose grip, though – there’s something in the air, and it feels almost like a prickling sensation over his brain, the sense of something both _not_ and _there_ all at once.

He's a hundred and eleven, looks like he's maybe in his early forties and entirely too old for this – this being catching a likely-looking fellow's attention outside of an evening and following it up with a snatched moment or two, but the West End is scattered with decent hotels and Thomas thinks he'd be able to get a room still even this late at night, especially as it’s mid-January in London and therefore not exactly the height of tourist season.

Besides, the young man standing under the portico is, quite frankly, gorgeous, even from a distance. He'd be of a height, or perhaps a little taller than Thomas himself, were they stood next to each other and his shoulders are broad under his winter coat. Thomas watches him for a moment, half-smiles at the raucous group of women stumbling past that are entirely too under-dressed for the chill but seem to be enjoying themselves anyway, and then steps forward...

...and then.

***

He sucked in a frantic breath, then another. It hurt to breathe, hurt when he tried to hold it, to steady his breathing. The metal around his wrists was far colder than it ought to be, considering, and he couldn't see anything in the darkness.

Thomas sucked in another shuddering breath, and waited.

***

He'd been shot twice in his long, long life. Once during the war – who wasn't, by the end? – and once in an alley outside a London theatre.

It was the second that stayed with him. He remembered falling forward, unable for some reason to stop himself from collapsing on the pavement, and then Peter's hissed _impello_ , the warmth of Peter's hand on his shoulder and his voice fading out as Thomas slipped into darkness.

He'd dreamt about Peter while he was in the hospital. The feelings of worry any teacher might have for an as yet untrained student, of course. In his drug-slowed mind, Peter metamorphoses into David. Or, well, no. That's not quite correct. The David of Thomas' memories takes on Peter's appearance, his skin darker than David's, their conversations revolving around memories Thomas shared with David, but while looking into Peter's eyes.

Thomas woke up confused, once, and turned his head to the left where he could just barely make out Peter’s gangly form curled uncomfortably into a chair next to the bed. His hand was resting on the blanket tucked in neatly around Thomas and his fingertips were just barely brushing Thomas’. He blinked twice, slowly, and slipped back into sleep.

When Thomas was finally, _finally_ allowed home from the hospital, Peter fluttered around him – desperate to help, so very anxious not to make matters worse. Thomas leaned on both Peter and Molly as they made their slow way up the Folly’s stairs and down the corridor to his room. Molly was the one to get him situated in the bed, naturally, but Peter was the one who hovered with his fingers twisting together in front of him like he had no idea what to do with his hands as Molly sent Thomas a rather too knowing look and quietly pulled the door almost closed on her way out.

“You can sit,” he told Peter, gesturing to the chair nearby. Every movement hurt, the slight wave of his hand pulling just enough to send a wave of pain through him. Thomas gritted his teeth and breathed through it.

Peter didn’t take the chair; Peter sat on the side of Thomas’ bed, the mattress dipping beneath his weight. Thomas was entirely too tired to be surprised. Peter’s eyes were wide and bruised-looking, his bottom lip looked sore where he’d been biting it. Thomas thought of everything they’d been through – everything he’d put Peter through since they’d met, and thought that he’d never quite disliked himself as much as in that moment.

“No one would blame you,” he managed to say slowly, “if you wanted to – to transfer, I’m sure we could arrange matters for you. Your oaths, I never meant…”

It was clearly the wrong thing to say – Peter looked hurt, then frowned, and said; “with all due respect, sir – shut up.”

When Thomas thinks of this later, he remembers that he’d just stared at Peter in wonderment. When, he’d thought, had he last been told to shut up? Well, besides by Alexander, of course. Peter had looked determined, leaning forward into Thomas’ space.

“I’m not leaving, sir,” Peter had said, and the certainty of the words had sounded like a vow.

***

He’d lost track of time. He’d been on his way out of the Folly at – just after eleven a.m., because the clock had chimed as he’d been pulling his gloves on at the bottom of the stairs. Thomas had held his staff in one hand and Toby’s leash in the other – why he’d been walking Toby, he couldn’t quite recall…

There was an ache in his lower back – he wasn’t as young as he once was, naturally. Or magically. The thought made a bubble of laughter rise up in his throat. He thought, in passing, that he might have a concussion.

He’d tried to pull on the chain earlier, hoping to loosen it at the point where it was fastened to the wall. No luck, of course – the most he’d achieved was some rather bad bruising and scrapes around his wrists that still bled a little sluggishly each time he caught the not-entirely smooth edge of the cuffs against them. The cuffs themselves – Thomas had been there for a while, wherever ‘there’ was, but his night vision wasn’t terribly good at the best of times. Even so, he’d managed to twist his hand enough to trace a fingertip over the cuffs when he’d realised he couldn’t even summon as much as a werelight. The metal had indentations in it – runes, if he wasn’t mistaken, and Thomas thought that one of them might have been the Uruz rune – power, unchained and wild, or perhaps not so unchained in this case.

He shifted slightly, and the nagging ache at his side became a little more persistent – potentially cracked or broken ribs, then.

Thomas sighed, and waited.

***

There had been something ever so slightly off about Peter for a couple of weeks – in retrospect, Thomas should have guessed a minor compulsion; a certain glazed cast to the eyes, a distraction of his manner, but then this _was_ Peter, who could possibly redefine the concept of ‘distracted’ on his better days.

When they find Simone and her ‘sisters’ dead, Thomas noticed that Peter almost froze in place for just a split second before he was off and moving again – not surprising, of course. Peter was bound to have seen dead bodies before making it into the clutches of the Folly, and more since, but Thomas knew it was always a little different, a little harder, when it was the body of someone you knew. He wasn't making any presumptions about whatever relationship there had been between Peter and Simone, but they clearly knew each other as more than just acquaintances or even friends. He sidled around the bustle of a police investigation in full process, once the Forensics team are on site, and quietly came up beside Peter. Thomas did hesitate before laying his hand on Peter’s shoulder, but once he did he kept his grip firm and supportive.

Peter was young, but not so young that he hadn’t known loss in his relatively short life.

Thomas only wished he could have kept it away from Peter for a little longer – there was something brewing in London, a tang of Punch’s mayhem still lingering on the air Thomas breathed, and perhaps it wasn’t the best time to take his first apprentice; that probably should have been at least ten years ago, but he’d genuinely thought… well, it didn’t really matter what he’d thought. Magic was coming back, Peter was the first apprentice the Folly had seen in decades, and Thomas – frankly, Thomas wouldn’t do without the younger man. He didn’t form attachments quickly, Thomas would be the first to admit that, followed in short order by David, but there was just something about Peter, a certain way of looking at things that was quite refreshing.

He watched Peter leave the scene, and only then turned back to business, only to find Miriam staring at him with one eyebrow raised.

Thomas hasn’t blushed in over sixty years – he’s not about to start now.

***

He calculated, in the darkness, that he’d been missing at least six hours by now – more, maybe, depending how long he’d been out. Thomas was inclined to blame Chorley. Since the incident with Lady Ty and her precocious daughter, Chorley had seemed to be escalating in the scope of his operations, if the chaos that kept springing up around London and the south-east was any indication.

There was an ache in his right shoulder, he had a splitting headache – and the ribs, of course – he couldn't see more than an inch in front of himself and didn’t know if that was because it was dark of if he was fooling himself that he could see in there at all (wherever _there_ was) and Thomas wad thoroughly, utterly bored out of his mind. He resorted to working through a fourth order spell, the next one he was planning on teaching Peter, if only to keep his mind off of his current situation.

***

Thomas had swallowed his pride and gone to Beverley less than twenty-four hours after he’d sent Peter out of London to Herefordshire. The woman had harboured some fondness for Peter, Thomas was certain, despite the time between their first misadventure and when Beverley had finally been allowed back down river. He’d told Peter to stop off at Hugh Oswald’s place first – it was about time Peter met some of the old guard, as it were (Peter comes back with Oswald’s battle staves and a story following him along later, as filtered through Harold up in Oxford, that Peter had been well-received out in Herefordshire.)

But he’d gone to Beverley because he couldn’t leave London, leave the Folly, and he couldn’t leave Peter to his own devices, and wait for the damage report, so he’d gone to Beverley and promised a favour in exchange.

Thomas knew what the demi-monde whisper about him – a favour from the Nightingale isn’t easily promised, but always fulfilled. A favour from the Nightingale can be worth its weight in gold.

Beverley had looked at him, momentarily scarily similar to her mother with her arms crossed and her head tilted just a little to the side. Her dark, intelligent eyes had been full something that looked awfully close to understanding.

“You don’t need to promise me a favour for this,” she’d told him. “I’d do it for Peter, you know.”

“I know,” Thomas had responded as he desperately wished for a way out of the conversation – straying uncomfortably close to feelings as they were.

“You should be careful with offers like that,” Beverly grinned. “’Specially around Ty. Or mum.”

“If it wasn’t…”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Beverly rolled her eyes, but hesitated on her way out of the door. “I’ll take care of him for you, you know that, right?” She’d patted him, a little awkwardly, on the arm.

Thomas had expected the two of them to come back – well, perhaps a little more attached than they had been. But for all the case had thrown them together – missing children, strange surroundings outside of London, and Beverley as good as her word and rescuing Peter from the Faerie Queen with a _train_ – the two of them seemed to settle into a friendship that mostly, as far as Thomas could tell, appeared to be founded on Beverley’s willingness to boss Peter around for his own good when the need called for it.

He’d come across them up in Peter’s quaintly named ‘tech cave’ once – Beverley had been lounging back on the sofa, bare feet in Peter’s lap with Molly looking on in interest while Peter very, very carefully with his tongue poking just a little out of the corner of his mouth in concentration, applied a coat of nail polish to Beverley’s toenails. Even then, there had been nothing of a sexual charge to the moment – Peter had looked embarrassed when he realised Thomas was standing in the doorway, but had gone right back to his task when Beverley had kicked at his thigh.

Molly had gone to stand, but Thomas had waved her back down discretely – he hadn’t come up to interrupt them, after all. Beverley had just grinned at him, and regally waved him to a seat on the other side of Peter. Well, the rugby was on, after all, albeit on silent to allow Beverley to tease Peter more, Thomas assumed.

He remembers that Peter’s thigh had been warm against his, that once Peter had finished with Beverley’s nails, he’d stretched out his arms along the back of the sofa, rolling his shoulders to ease out the tenseness there. To this day, Thomas wouldn’t been able to recall anything of importance happening during the match – Peter’s warmth next to him, the nearness of his arm causing the hairs at the base of Thomas’ neck to prickle. Thomas was well past his first centenary now, but he’d never felt more like a blushing schoolboy than that afternoon.

Beverley had given him a little smile as she left and reached up to pat him gently on the cheek.

“He’s dense, yeah? He’ll get there, babes,” she’d said with a wink before walking down the stairs arm-in-arm with Molly leaving Thomas staring after them.

Thomas decides that it’s better for his sanity if he doesn’t delve too deeply into that particular abyss.

***

There was a distant muffled _boom_ above him, enough to shake the wall he was chained to. A minute later and Thomas was feeling decidedly damp around the general sock region. There was water rising in the room he was sitting in.

He grinned, eased into a slightly more comfortable position, and waited.

***

If Peter brought a new, refreshing way of looking at matters (police investigations, exactly how many cheap calculators one could dissolve the chips of into so much sand at one time), then Abigail was by far the most taxing on Thomas’ distinctly lacking teaching skills. There were multiple reasons he’d never taken on an apprentice before – one of them being that teaching was about as far from Thomas’ skill set that it was frankly remarkable that Peter and he had muddled along this far without blowing up a good chunk of the Folly.

Still, Peter was remarkably good at self-study. Thomas merely had to introduce a topic, and Peter could be found in one of the Folly’s libraries surrounded by books, or down in the labs with all the newfangled safety equipment on and a grin on his face that could have lit up the sky…

Abigail, though – Abigail was remarkably astute for her age, extremely intelligent and very, very determined. Her favourite question was also apparently ‘why’… she always wanted to know the workings behind the theorems Thomas was wading through with her. Thomas had barely been keeping ahead of Peter’s training as it was – it had been decades since he’d needed to take the forma step-by-step, after all, and it was a lot harder to break something down into its individual components when the full item came as naturally as drawing breath to him. With Abigail as well – Thomas found himself spending a lot more evenings in front of the fireplace in what was formally the billiards room, in reality yet another library, although with more comfortable seating, and now acted as a snug place to peruse a book in the evening, especially as the winter was drawing in and the little parlour had a fireplace that Molly kept stocked with coal whereas the coach house was across the courtyard and not the ideal trip to make on an evening in early December while the rain bucketed it down, the wonders of an Internet connection notwithstanding.

Peter had a habit of finding him there as well; an interruption that Thomas found wasn’t entirely unwelcome. It meant that Peter had an easy point of reference should he come up against a wall in his research. It meant that Thomas wasn’t alone, for the first time in more years than he cared to recall.

Once such evening, Thomas had glanced up at a slight noise outside, and found himself quite captivated by the play of firelight over Peter’s countenance. Thomas had always known that Peter was a handsome young man – from the moment he’d caught sight of him in Covent Garden, in fact – but the forgiving nature of firelight was kind to most and Thomas found his breath catching in the back of his throat at the sudden, ridiculous bubble of want that throbbed behind his ribs.

Nonsense, of course. Peter was his apprentice – Thomas had a duty of care towards him. The very nature of their arrangement meant that Thomas held all the power in this relationship. It wasn’t like it was with David – the same age, the same grounding in the basic principles of magic, schooled along together and equals by experience by the time they left Casterbrook. Peter was so terribly young – barely started out, really, and Thomas was over a hundred years old.

David would have laughed at Thomas’ sentimentality

Peter had looked up, then, and Thomas was caught by that gaze, the line of Peter’s jaw and the half-smile on his lips. All Peter had done, though, was smile a little more ( _at Thomas_ ) and glance back down at his book.

Thomas had drawn what felt like his first breath in minutes, his skin felt alight in a way that it hadn’t since the thirties, since David. It had taken a rather long time for Thomas to find his place on the page in front of him again.

***

The water was up to his mid-calf now; the distant and irregular _booms_ not quite so distant.

Then there was another explosion that sounded a little closer than the previous ones, the wall he was chained to shook again, and a door nearby slammed open.

“Sir?” Peter’s frantic voice rang out. “Oh, bollocks. Um. One second, sir.”

“Oh, I appear to be in no hurry, Peter,” Thomas said, feeling a great deal lighter, if exponentially damper. “Just… hanging around.”

“Did you -” Peter started, and Thomas grinned. Really, it was just too easy sometimes. The dark lifted, and Thomas realised that he wasn’t being kept in the dark at all, but rather blinded by some twisted variation on a sixth order spell that he recalled learning when he was younger. Thank god it was only temporary. Peter was kneeling in front of him, a frown on his face, and his hands already reaching for the shackles around Thomas’ wrists, and all Thomas could do was stare at him.

“Do you know how to get these off?” Peter asked, his fingers warm around Thomas’ wrist. Thomas reluctantly tore his eyes away from Peter to look up at the iron – it was just as crudely hammered together as he thought it was going to be, the runes hacked rather than carved into the metal. All in all, quite an amateur effort – but nevertheless enough to hold even him. He counted himself lucky that all they were intended to do was inhibit his magic.

“I think for now, you may just want to work on the brickwork in the wall,” Thomas said. “We might need some rather more specialist equipment then we have access to right now – and this really would provide a good learning experience for you as well.”

Peter stared at him. “I’d rather get them off you sooner than later, sir.”

“Quite,” Thomas hummed in thought as Peter helped him get slowly to his feet. There was a cramp in his hip that Thomas stretched out, allowing himself to lean on Peter. “Unfortunately, these particular cuffs tended to be built with booby traps.”

“Like a devil’s trap?” Peter asked, looking understandably wary.

“Nowhere near half as dangerous – providing you’d be fast enough to cauterise the wounds if the cuffs took my hands off at the wrist.”

Now Peter looked a little ill, levelling the cuffs with a look that he usually reserved for members of UKIP and the more PR-focused of the senior officers they encountered.

Beverley appeared in the doorway as Peter was focusing enough of his power to strategically loosen the brickwork around the ring Thomas’ chains are attached to. She grinned.

“If this is a bad time, I can come back later.”

“Ha-ha,” Peter muttered, relaxing as the chain he’s holding goes lax and the ring falls out of the wall.

“I did wonder where the water came from,” Thomas lied – he knew exact what brand of mayhem had visited his holding place once the water had started creeping in.

“Yeah, well, we’d better get out of here before Jules comes looking,” Beverley muttered, and glared around at her surroundings. Apparently, it was lacking a certain _je ne sais quoi_ when it came to holding cells for wizards.

Thomas put two and two together – “I’m in Dulwich?” he frowned.

“Yeah, the River Peck was really convenient,” Peter grinned, and Beverley slipped in on Thomas’ other side to help support him.

“Interesting,” Thomas mused. It’s keeping his mind off of the pain radiating out from his ribs, anyway.

“Well, Peter was fretting,” Beverley sniffed, tossing her braids back.

On Thomas’ other side, Peter was suspiciously quiet.

“Oh, well, if Peter was fretting…” Thomas muttered, and sucked in a breath as he stumbled – the misstep caused the aches to clamour for more attention, the sharp intake of breath only compounded the issue. Peter paused, holding Thomas to a stop, and ducked down to press a warm, gentle hand over Thomas’ side. He caught Thomas’ gaze and seemed to sag a little with relief. There was a squeeze of his hand, and Thomas thought that maybe there was something they’d left unsaid for a tad too long – age difference and master/apprentice issues aside.

Peter really did have quite a lovely smile, and it took Thomas a moment to realise he’d said that out loud. Peter’s eyes widened, Beverley cackled and Thomas blushed – for maybe the third time in as many decades.

“Must be the concussion,” he threw out, not exactly hoping that anyone present was going to believe him.

“Good thing you’re going straight off to the hospital, then,” Peter grinned and they slowly, so slowly, move off down the corridor again.

“I have to wonder, though,” Thomas broke the momentary silence a few steps later, “exactly what condition the two of you have left the building in.”


End file.
